The onslaught of DC Comics movie news continues. Now The Hollywood Reporter says that Suicide Squad 2 is moving forward with a new director who’s jumping ship from Marvel to the Distinguished Competition: James Gunn.

Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after old offensive tweets of the director’s resurfaced last summer. Previously it was reported that Gunn was working on the script for a new Suicide Squad; now THR claims Gunn will also direct the film, which is not a sequel to the 2016 movie made by David Ayer:

The sequel has the title of The Suicide Squad and is not being labeled a direct sequel but as a relaunch ... Sources say that Gunn’s focus is to take the franchise in a new direction with mostly an all-new cast of characters and actors. Sources also say that the project is also very much rooted in Gunn’s vibe, as seen in the Guardians movies.

The first Suicide Squad, which starred Will Smith as Deadshot and Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, grossed $746 million worldwide; not too shabby for a movie based on a comic very few people had heard of about a group of super villains forced to work for the U.S. government. The film didn’t quite live up to its hype and extremely effective marketing campaign, though, and it was very curiously edited. (Remember Slipknot? Go Slipknot!) Rather than immediately produce a Suicide Squad 2, Warner Bros. instead spun Robbie’s popular Harley Quinn character into her own film featuring another DC Comics team, the Birds of Prey.

Gunn’s sardonic tone would be perfect for the characters; it’s arguably a lot closer to the style of the Suicide Squad trailers people loved than the actual movie they got in 2016. (David Ayer, a guy known for bleak war and crime movies, isn’t exactly the funniest filmmaker.) If we can’t get another Guardians from James Gunn, a Suicide Squad movie is a pretty good consolation prize. According to this report, we’ll see Gunn’s Suicide Squad in August of 2021.

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